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Solar X-Flare Blasts Directly Toward Earth

Posted by timothy on from the taunting-bruce-willis dept.

Freshly Exhumed writes with this excerpt from Space Weather: "Big sunspot AR1520 unleashed an X1.4-class solar flare on July 12th at 1653 UT. Because this sunspot is directly facing Earth, everything about the blast was geoeffective. For one thing, it hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) directly toward our planet. According to a forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the CME will hit Earth on July 14th around 10:20 UT (+/- 7 hours) and could spark strong geomagnetic storms. Sky watchers should be alert for auroras this weekend."

2 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Revised Forcast by rminsk · · Score: 5, Informative

    The CME launched toward Earth by yesterday's X-flare is moving faster than originally thought. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab have revised their forecast accordingly, advancing the cloud's expected arrival time to 09:17 UT (5:17 am EDT) on Saturday, July 14th. Weekend auroras are likely.

  2. Strong geomagnetic storms? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    While the news before the fact is great for those of us living some place with a chance of catching the aurora, I don't think there is any indication there will be strong geomagnetic storms. NOAA Space Weather Center is predicting only storm level of G1 with a chance of G2, which happens quite frequently. Usually if something big is coming, their alert timeline lights up with a lot more than a G1 or warning of A > 20. I've made a habit of taking the 10 seconds to check their alert page every time a relative links or talks about a story of some massive geomagnetic storm coming, and pretty much every time it shows (both before and after) that it was something minor that happens with a frequency of more than once a month.